DAY 19 - CONTINUED

The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is probably the most beautiful and well-run lighthouse I’ve ever been to.  Beautiful because this lighthouse is actually a house, a Victorian one at that, with the light room stuck on top almost as an afterthought.  Well-run because Yaquina Lights Inc., the nonprofit in charge of the place, has gone to great lengths to preserve not only the light, but the residence itself, exactly the way it was when keeper Charles Pierce, with his wife and nine children, lived here from 1871-1874.  Every room was made up and decorated just as it would have been back in the day, and the entire house was chock full of informative signs and informative volunteers who could describe life in the lighthouse with a considerable degree of knowledge and authority.  Even though entrance to the lighthouse was technically free, we felt no hesitation about making a donation.  

The fact that this guy Pierce had nine kids is not lost on you as you walk through this charming, albeit tiny house, which would probably fit a family of four nowadays.  I assume “Where did everyone fit?” is the most popular question asked of the volunteers here.  The actual light room was closed to the public but there was plenty more to look at.  The bedrooms, kitchen, music room, living room, were all on display.  Some rooms you could walk through, while others had to be viewed from behind a velvet rope.  One of the most interesting things we saw was a series of framed artwork hanging on the walls of the family room.  At first these abstract designs resembling flowers and doilies appeared to be made out of some kind of dark thread or lace.  But one of the volunteers told us to look closer and see that the material being used was actually human hair, which the girls in this family apparently never cut.  When it came out in their hairbrush they would save the strands in a jar, then use it later on to make these designs, which they accomplished by wrapping the individual hairs around pieces of wire.  Definitely a craft that required patience and a certain dedication to tedium.  But I guess when you’re in the middle of nowhere, as this place very much was in the late 1800’s, with no TV and nine kids to corral, you’ll latch onto any form of entertainment you can think of that will keep everybody occupied and quiet.

One thing that none of the signs, the free literature, or even the volunteers talk about very much at Yaquina Bay, is what a short-lived project this particular lighthouse was.  Pierce and his family were the first and last to live here, and the lighthouse was only in operation a scant four years before the Yaquina Head Lighthouse was constructed about three miles up the road.  The most that Yaquina Lights Inc. will say about the subject in their brochure is:

It soon became apparent that the [Yaquina Bay] Light was not as visible as needed, so the government decommissioned it in 1874.

The real story wasn’t quite as banal as that.  The Yaquina Head Light was supposed to be built at Cape Foulweather, some fifteen miles to the north.  But somehow through a colossal bureaucratic goof the light was built here instead, rendering the smaller, less powerful Yaquina Bay station obsolete.  One has to wonder, in the year or so it took from groundbreaking to completion, why nobody with half a brain saw the new lighthouse being built in town, questioned the necessity of two lights so close together, and posed that question to somebody in charge of the paperwork and logistics.  Whatever the reason, mister Pierce and his family of twelve (a tenth child was born during his abbreviated tenure there) were shipped off to another assignment, and the Yaquina Head light took control of the local waterways.   

Before leaving the Yaquina Bay light (are you keeping the two straight?) we headed down to the basement where there was a decent-sized gift shop.  Lauren picked out a few figurines of the lighthouses we’d seen today and I snagged a shotglass with all the Oregon lighthouses on it.  The volunteers running the register told us that Yaquina Head was open to the public, but it closed at four o’clock, which was the time now.  That was okay.  Between this and the Coquille River Light, we’d gotten in a good deal of lighthouse history and education for one day.  Plus, there were even more to see tomorrow.  We figured we’d just drive up to Yaquina Head, snap a quick picture and move on.  There was one more Oregon lighthouse left after that, and we were hoping to bag the entire state in a single day.  But daylight was working against us, so we had to hurry.

As it turned out, the Yaquina Head Lighthouse was situated on a large nature preserve with a great deal to see and our quick photo op turned into yet another hour-long diversion.  Actually, the reason we stayed so long probably had as much to do with the fact that it cost five dollars to get into the nature preserve even though the lighthouse was closed, and we felt compelled to get our money’s worth. 

Lauren summed it up best, saying, “Are you kidding me?  The open lighthouses didn’t charge us a thing and now we have to give you five bucks for something we can’t even get into?”  Of course she said that to me, not to the guy collecting our money.

So we made the most of it.  First stop, of course, was the lighthouse itself.  Although the interior was closed, we were able to walk around outside the base and take our obligatory “looking up” shots, which were hard to get on account of the wind blowing harder than anything I’d ever experienced.  And remember, I’ve lived through a tornado – and Point Reyes for that matter.  I conducted a little experiment and leaned into the wind, waiting for an even stronger gust.  When it came I let my center of gravity tip back, and sure enough, for a very brief second the wind was actually strong enough to hold me up. 

After getting our lighthouse shots we headed down the cliff via a wooden staircase to Cobble Beach.  The entire beach, as its name suggests, is comprised of millions upon millions of impossibly smooth gray cobblestones, which made a very cool hollow, almost glottal sound as we walked on them.  The stones were formed by lava flowing into the ocean and quickly cooling, then eroding over millions of years of ebbing and flowing tides.  The texture of the beach was mesmerizing and I took numerous pictures, both close-ups and wide shots, thinking these would make some kickass desktop pictures for my computer.

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A few hundred feet out in the water, dozens of seals were sunning themselves on a series of large rocks.  Fortunately for them, the tide was in far enough to deter the other tourists from walking out and disturbing them.  Instead they poked around in the tidepools (the tourists, not the seals), fishing out various specimens with little nets and examining them closely before returning them to their home, or chucking them as far as they could out to sea.  For our part, Lauren and I walked around on the tricky cobblestone beach for about a half hour, picking up cobbles and dropping them to hear that funky hollow sound over and over again.  But with daylight a-wastin’, we had to get a move on if we hoped to make our final lighthouse before sundown. 

A sign on the stairwell had sternly warned beachcombers not to remove any of the cobbles from the beach, though you could take as much driftwood as you wanted.  While it was very tempting to ignore the first rule, I was well schooled in the “leave no trace” philosophy and knew that if I took just one stone, and everybody else took just one stone, Cobble Beach would eventually become known as just “the beach.”  Instead, I took advantage of the second rule and snagged a smooth-as-marble piece of wood, which might have passed for a fossil of some sort if you didn’t know better.

The race was officially on when we left Yaquina Head just after five o’clock.  The Cape Meares Lighthouse was near the town of Tillamook almost seventy miles north, and it closed at sunset, which had been occurring somewhere between six-thirty and seven o’clock.  We would be cutting it close.  I drove as fast as I could, but U.S. 101 was still a two-lane road that passed through a series of towns with their own share of lights and local traffic.  Once in Tillamook (which I think is one of the coolest names for a town ever) we started looking carefully for our turn, not wanting to waste precious seconds turning around.  The sun was already below the treeline.  Fortunately, the good Mooks of Tilla were gracious enough to put up a big old sign with a big old arrow pointing to the left, declaring, “Lighthouse 10 Miles.” 

Ten miles!  This really was going to come down to the wire.  We drove down several secondary roads, including one that was mostly gravel, racing past signs that kept taunting us with distances: “Lighthouse 5 Miles… Lighthouse 2 Miles…”  The sun had now officially set and the sky was quickly turning from orange to dark purple.  Finally we saw a sign for Cape Meares State Park.  The sign at the start of the dirt road told us, “Park closed and gate locked at dusk.”  But the gate was still open.  Dear God it looked like we were going to make it.  We tore down the dirt road, kicking up dust behind us and praying that there would be enough daylight to get a good picture.  About thirty seconds later we saw a pair of headlights approaching.  We hoped for a brief second that it was just a carload of tourists packing it up for the day, but then the car flashed its high beams at us and we knew it was a park ranger.  Pulling up alongside, the rather mannish-looking woman in the brown button-down shirt informed us she was getting ready to lock up for the night.

Nooooo!  We had come so close!  Defeated, we turned around in the parking lot where we couldn’t even see the lighthouse for a Hail Mary distance shot.  We waved to the ranger on our way out and noted that the park would reopen at 7AM.

Now the dilemma was what to do.  Keep driving?  There was a hostel another fifty miles north in the town of Seaside that had gotten great reviews in our hostel book, but that would mean forgoing the Cape Meares Light.  It would be a shame to have come this far, only to miss bagging the entire state of Oregon by a single lighthouse.  In the end, we let our finances make the decision.  The cost of the Seaside hostel’s private room was more expensive than any of the motels we’d been staying in the last several nights.  It was as good an excuse as any to justify spending the night in Tillamook.  We’d reattempt Cape Meares in the morning.

We drove back into Tillamook and found the Mar Clair Inn.  I went inside and found the office empty, so I spent a few seconds making subtle attention-getting noises – sniffing, clearing my throat, shuffling from side to side – in an attempt to draw out whoever was supposed to be working the desk.  When that yielded no results, I rang the little bell on the desk gently.  Then I rang it a little louder.  Then I rang it several times in rapid ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding succession. 

This motel was set up like a lot of others we’d seen in the last couple of days.  While the rooms themselves were in a separate building, arranged in one long continuous line, the office was actually adjacent to somebody’s house.  In fact behind the counter was an open doorway with only a pair of curtains separating the living area from the office.  Behind the curtains I could hear the sound of some Law & Order incarnation playing loudly on the TV.  Perhaps the manager (or whoever) was just on the other side of the house and couldn’t hear me over the loud BONG-BONG’s. 

At a loss for what else to do, I walked behind the counter, parted the curtain ever so slightly and called out, “Hello…?  Hell-ooo-ooo!”  Still nothing, I pushed the curtain aside and took a few tentative steps into the house.  I stopped short and shrunk back quickly when I spotted a man eating dinner at the dining room table, apparently oblivious to my presence.  I scooted back into the motel office, seemingly undetected.  Now I was pissed.  Unless the guy was literally (as in clinically) deaf, there was no reason why he shouldn’t have come out here by now.  This charade had been going on for over five minutes by this point.  You’d think that if only for security reasons, somebody would have checked in on the office by now.  I mean seriously, rudeness aside, there were also a lot of things worth stealing up here.  Lamps, bookshelves, the freakin’ cash register.  If the guy in the house was just taking a dinner break and didn’t want to be bothered, fine, but geez you’d think he would have at least locked the door and put a “Will Return” sign on it.

I grabbed a business card off the counter and went over to the courtesy phone.  I sat down in a comfy chair (which, had I been another person, I would have attempted to steal as well) and dialed the number for the motel.  God love’em, the office phone had an actual, real live bell for its ringer.  The kind that is loud and obnoxious and impossible to ignore.  I thought for sure this would bring somebody running.  At the very least, I figured the phone would also be ringing elsewhere in the house and somebody would have to eventually pick up.  But the phone just rang and rang.  No manager.  No irate house dweller.  No answering machine for that matter. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” I said intentionally loud, slamming the handset down.

“Well screw this.”  I picked up the phone and hit redial.  As soon as the office phone began its shrill, ear-piercing BBBRRRRR-IIIIIINNNNGGGG, I set the courtesy phone’s receiver on the table and walked out.  I have no idea how long the phone blared before somebody finally came to check on it.  I was long gone by then.  But I sincerely hope the phone company in Tillamook didn’t have some kind of automatic cut off that breaks the connection after a set number of rings.

Lauren was a little incredulous when I told her that I had been in there for nearly ten minutes and hadn’t spoken to a single person.  It’s really a shame that the Mar Clair was the cheapest motel we’d seen in town.  It would have been nice to say, “Well they lost out on our business.”  But we were on a budget, and cheap rooms always trump lousy service.  Either way, we obviously couldn’t walk back in there now.  At least not right now.  So we drove down the street to a local restaurant called simply, The Pancake House for a dinnertime helping of their signature dish.  The service was a bit slow and the server rather curt (there seemed to be a trend developing in Tillamook), but the food was thick, heavy and buttery, the way good pancakes should be. 

Full and satisfied, and getting drowsy, we headed back to the Mar Clair Inn.  For the first time all trip I had Lauren go inside to secure us a room.  I wasn’t sure if the guy I’d seen eating his dinner earlier had seen me as well, or if he was even the one who would be (hopefully) working the desk, but I didn’t feel like having an awkward conversation if that was the case.  Lauren went in and delivered our typical spiel to the now-present clerk. 

“A room with one bed please.”

“How many people.”

(sigh) “Just me.”

We weren’t sure if it was wise to make somebody think that there was a 33-weeks-pregnant woman staying alone in one of the rooms here.  That seems like just the kind of helpless person that a freak rapist-murderer would prey on.  But if it came to that, said rapist would be in for a very big surprise when he came through the door.  After that, I don’t think we’d have been squabbling over the ten-dollar charge for our extra occupant. 

Incidentally, Lauren claims to have had a lovely conversation with the guy working the desk and she noted that the courtesy phone had been replaced to its cradle. 

ONTO DAY 20